I wrote about the Dexter Reed case today.

There are two strong implications from those attempting to make a martyr of the 26-year-old man killed at a traffic stop after he shot at the police.

One is that if the police start yelling at you and pull their guns when you defy their orders in a threatening way, this somehow makes it understandable that you’d pull a gun and open fire on them. This is ridiculous.

The second is that it is somehow the fault of the police if, in the course of trying to find potentially dangerous people with illegal guns, they pull over a potentially dangerous person with an illegal gun — i.e., if Reed hadn’t been stopped, this never would have happened.

But it’s obviously not a good idea to allow people capable of trying to kill cops to run around your city with illegal guns.

The fundamental problem here was that Reed had a gun and used it.